


Superboy and the Invisible Girl

by lamarcelaise



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol Abuse, Angst, Character Death, Depression, Drug Abuse, Fic Exchange, Hurt/Comfort, I mean there is seriously a lot of angst, M/M, So much angst, Suicide, comic book artist Grantaire, superhero Enjolras, superhero au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-02
Updated: 2013-06-11
Packaged: 2017-12-13 18:37:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/827514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lamarcelaise/pseuds/lamarcelaise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire is a comic book artist who can't seem to find a job; that is, until he comes up with the best creation of his life: Apollo. But the project could make or break him in ways that he never could have imagined. Is it a blessing or a curse?</p><p>For the Enjoltairechallenges gift exchange: Working with the details you gave us, we have decided that the best match for you would be hufflepufftimelord. They would like a fanfic, rated Teen/Mature and in any genre ”from fluffy to angsty” [sic]. The prompt to work around is “superpowers AU”.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry. This is not going to be happy, probably, and I'm thinking of writing multiple chapters. This is for an exchange on the Tumblr for hufflepufftimelord. 
> 
> (And yes, the title is a N2N reference. I'm not sorry at all.)
> 
> Also, sorry for mistakes. English is not my first language.

Grantaire was down on his luck, and nothing could pull him back up again; of that, he was sure. He hadn't had an idea in months, and his publishers had said, in no uncertain terms, that they needed new material. He was struggling to make ends meet and, after a while, he put his pencils down for good. 

It was a Saturday night, and he had just stumbled back into his small apartment, reeking of alcohol and messily cursing whatever cruel God would subject him to this sort of a fate. What he needed was a hero. He almost laughed aloud at this; of course he needed a hero. He needed to come up with something fantastical, something with a red cape who saved the lives of everyone, risking death because it was the right thing to do. 

Well, maybe not a cape. Wasn't there some children's movie that killed off the characters with capes? He had never been able to shake that out of his head. 

Regardless, here he was, sitting alone and lamenting his situation. What he needed was a hero; but, perhaps not the type of hero that he was thinking of. Wouldn't it be wonderful if there were really superheroes, someone that really existed who could literally fly him away from this? Wouldn't it be lovely? He closed his eyes and imagined it, but before he knew it, he was really flying. The wind was on his face, and the city was below him. There were the lights; they looked just as small from above as from below. The people didn't look like ants; he couldn't see them very clearly at all. That old cliché was a load of bullshit. 

The feeling of flying was exhilarating, like nothing he had ever felt before; however, after a few minutes, he noticed that he was not alone. There was a sort of pressure on his back, arms around his chest. He was not flying; someone else was, and they were taking him along for the ride. 

He looked up and was immediately met with clear grey eyes. Those eyes belonged to a pale face with curly blond hair, tied back. At first glance, he would think that this person was a woman; however, he was unmistakably male when one looked a little closer. His jaw, his brow, his cheekbones; Grantaire was sure that they must have been chiseled out of marble. 

It took a moment for him to realise that he was staring. It was another moment entirely before he realised that he should be afraid, or confused, or at least ask questions. However, the only thing that he could think to say, the first thing to come out of his mouth, was a soft, "Hey."

The stranger's lips quirked up ever so slightly, and Grantaire was sure that it shouldn't be natural for marble to move. "Hey, yourself," he responded, just as softly, voice carrying gently but firmly over the wind. His was a voice that could command a crowd. His was a voice of life, of passion, of believing; and it may be absurd to think that one could classify a voice this way, especially after only two words. It may be absurd, surely, but wasn't this entire situation absurd? Wasn't it all just so fantastical that questioning the way that a drunkard mentally classified the voice of a flying stranger should not be at the top of the list of things to worry about? 

Shaking himself out of his thoughts a little, he said, "I'm Grantaire."

"I know," the blond murmured, lips painfully close to his ear, breath hotter than the cool wind above the city. 

"What's your name?" Grantaire asked, not even bothering to ask how the other knew who he was. 

The man leaned closer still, lips lightly brushing the dark-haired man's ear, and whispered, "Enjolras." 

Before Grantaire even had a chance to smile back up at him, he was gone; and the artist was falling, falling, falling.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't updated this like I'd have liked to. I was going to do one chapter a day and possibly have it done by Wednesday of the week last, but it didn't end up that way... I was married on Thursday and have been busy ever since, and will be busy from probably Wednesday of the week coming, onward. I am not going to make excuses; I am simply going to write it out as I have planned as quickly as possible. I have the plot written out entirely (though, admittedly, I have already deviated from that slightly), so it should not be, hopefully, too much difficult.

Grantaire awoke with a start, sitting up abruptly. Almost immediately, he clutched his head in pain; he had an awful hangover, and sitting up like that did absolutely fuck-all to help it. For a moment, he strained to think of what caused him to start like that, but very quickly deemed it to be completely futile and not worth the literal head-ache that it caused. As he began to lay back down, hoping to sleep off at least the worst of it, he saw a flash of blond hair, grey eyes, falling, _Enjolras_.

His eyes flew back open, and he groaned. This was not something that he wanted to deal with right now, but it obviously wasn't going to leave him. That dream had seemed so vivid, so real, that man so lifelike, that name sticking in his head even when he wanted to forget. _Enjolras._

"Damn it all, 'Aire," he murmured to himself. There was no way that he could get to sleep until he got all of this ( _Enjolras_ ) shit out of his systemme. Thus, with a pained groan, he sat up and searched out his pencils. He had sworn off of it in a fit of rage, cursing his luck, but there was no escaping the fact that he needed to vent whatever the hell this was, and the only way he knew how to do that was to draw it. 

It took him the better part of the day, drawing sketch after sketch, and he began to distort it, to create a background story to this flying man. He was not just a man, but a superhero called Apollo. Apollo flew through the skies helping the needy, not for any sort of personal gain, but simply because that was what was right. It was speculated that he could honestly be Apollo himself, and the media went extensively into theories of his origin, but nobody could say for sure. He was a very private man, rarely stopped to chat; he simply saved people, then asked, in his angelic voice, if they were alright, flying away again when he had a satisfactory answer, continuing to help until he got it. 

No one knew that Apollo was once a marble statue, life breathed into him by the gods themselves. Nobody knew that he was endowed with not only super-powers, but with a kind heart and a fiery disposition that drove him to do good. He was created to be perfect, but even he had his flaws: an all-encompassing idealism, a belief that mere mortals could be as inherently good as he. That was why, in his own private life, he was an activist. His kind heart, though perhaps his biggest asset, would double as his Achilles heel; and if anything could kill him, it would be his naïveté. 

After finishing all of this, and even drawing up a sort of plot, Grantaire realised that he had finally struck gold. He had finally created a hero that would sell. That dream, while at first it seemed like a curse because of his hangover, was actually a wonderful blessing. Ignoring the pain in his head, swallowing down a few Advil in a desperately futile attempt to alleviate it, he ran out the door with a portfolio filled with everything that he had done that day. 

His previous company, upon having the pitch all but forced onto them by an overeager Grantaire (a rare sight, to be sure; he rarely had any sort of enthusiasm for, well, anything.), was ecstatic; the story was wonderful, the art was amazing, and he was in. Never having been overly fond of too much attention, Grantaire proposed to publish his comic book series under the rebus "R", and the company happily accepted the provision. For Grantaire, his life was finally turning around, and he owed it all to his golden Apollo. 

That night, when he went to sleep, he was with Enjolras again. They were both sitting in his bedroom, holding hands and talking; and when Enjolras leaned in and kissed him softly, he felt happier than he ever had in his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, a note: some people try to shorten "Grantaire" to "'Taire". Taire is the French word for "to shut up" (which he never seems to do anyway). He himself shortens his name to "R": Grantaire sounds like "grand aire", with grand meaning "big" and aire being how one would pronounce the letter R. Some people seem to be unaware of this, so I felt the need to explain it, as I will continue to be referring to him as 'Aire periodically in this fan-fiction.


	3. Chapter 3

Grantaire's friends were beginning to worry about him. When they did see him, he paid them absolutely no mind. However, they were seeing him less and less, to the point where Grantaire even leaving his apartment was becoming a rare phenomenon. For all that they worried, it was becoming increasingly evident that there was nothing that they could do to stop it. They tried inviting him out more, but he kept making excuses. They tried inviting themselves over, but he was increasingly unresponsive to them. Finally, they even tried an intervention, but he wouldn't listen to them. In fact, he kicked them out and refused to talk to them at all afterwards. 

It was becoming increasingly worrying, but they could do nothing about it, and Grantaire was having none of their attempts. They tried to call his publishers, but he snapped to them that he was fine, he was just very busy making comic books; and they couldn't really argue with that. They were sure that he was just being incredibly diligent with his work, and there was nothing harmful about that. He did his best to assure them that that was the case. Eventually, his friends had to content themselves with the idea that once this story ended, he would be back to his old self. 

However, Grantaire was in a deep downward spiral that even his worried friends couldn't adequately predict the magnitude of. The less he went out, the more he became absorbed in his artwork. The more he became absorbed in his artwork, the more he had these fantasies; and the more fantasies he had, the more they turned into outright delusions. Grantaire would sleep more and more, would drink more and more, would do anything to trigger the "visits" from Enjolras which he so craved. 

Eventually, though it didn't take long, he became very absorbed in drugs. He certainly wasn't new to the realm of drug use, but he took a deep dive into outright, overzealous drug abuse, trying things that he had previously sworn that he never would. Anything that triggered his hallucinations was something that he would be willing to try; and, if it worked particularly well, he would be more than willing to try more than once. 

At some point, he began to argue with Enjolras in his fantasies. The blond was going to get himself killed. He couldn't possibly believe that human nature was as pure as a being of light like himself, as a being created by the gods themselves. Enjolras would shoot back that Grantaire was just a cynic, that a nonbeliever had no place by his side. It broke his heart, and Enjolras would apologise, stroking his dark locks gently and murmuring soft assurances into his ear until such a time when the hallucination disappeared. 

His comic was becoming more and more popular, without regard to his own personal downfall. The dark, troubled mind of the artist seeped into the themes and artwork of the comic. People close to the hero would die in a spray of blood: stabbed by a bayonet, shot alone by a firing squad, shot through the floorboards three at a time while he had to watch and look into the faces of his dying friends. The crowds read with a gleeful horror, completely absorbed, while he watched the blood bubble up from his best friend's lips; and still, this man believed so deeply in the inherent goodness of mankind. Still, he made friends, recruited them to his cause, had sidekicks, only for all of them to be slashed and burned as soon as he began to get attached. 

They fought about that, too. Grantaire hated seeing Enjolras hurt, hated the steely mask that the other would put on when his friends died, hated knowing that the blond blamed himself for their deaths. He begged Enjolras to give up his career as a superhero and his life as an activist, begged him to lay low so that he could be happy; but Enjolras retorted, far too coldly, that as long as the world needed saving, he would be there to do it. Grantaire was exasperated and enraptured all at once, hating this side of his hero and yet knowing that this was why he was in love with him in the first place. 

The blood continued to run in rivers down the cobblestone streets, the death toll increased, and Grantaire's drug and alcohol intake skyrocketed. His depression increased exponentially, driving him deeper and deeper into his habits and delusions; and if he knew that it was going to kill him, he didn't seem to care enough to want to do a single damned thing about it. 

Finally, he stopped seeing Enjolras. No matter how many foreign substances he tried to pump into his systemme, he stopped seeing the blond altogether. He tried, tried so hard, but he couldn't take it; the darkness within him consumed him, and he downed three bottles of whiskey before stumbling into the toilet, fumbling through the cabinets to find something, anything with which he could slash his wrists and end it. To him, a life without his hero was not one that he could ever consider going back to. 

Just as he found his razor, just as he was fumbling to take it apart, he saw gold in the corner of his eye, and dropped everything, trembling and turning towards the door. He didn't want to let himself believe it, didn't want to be let down, but there he was. There was Enjolras. 

"Is it... really you?" he slurred, not quite trusting his own senses. 

The blond didn't give an answer. He just smiled, held out his hand, and whispered, "Come with me." 

Grantaire couldn't even think of disobeying. Without thinking at all, he reached out a trembling hand, and the blond's smile grew wider as their fingers entwined. He pulled the artist into a tight embrace, kissing him deeply. "Let's go." Grantaire could only dumbly nod, and Enjolras picked him up bridal-style, flying away with him, higher and higher, until they left the city behind entirely. 

___

It was three in the morning. The autopsy confirmed the cause of death to be an overdose of alcohol and pain pills. The time of death was half past midnight. Grantaire's friends were a mess; especially Joly, who had been the one to find the body. 

If any of them had looked out of the window at that moment, they might have seen a streak of gold fly past the window. They might have seen Apollo carrying a certain dark-haired man into the heavens, ready to take his place as a new star. As it was, all they saw was the sterile, white walls of the city morgue.


End file.
